It's nominating season for the Supreme Court

President Barack Obama met with key Senators Wednesday to discuss the impending nomination and confirmation process for a Supreme Court justice to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.

Stevens, sometimes called the “liberal lion” of the court, has served since 1975. He was nominated by Republican Gerald Ford and confirmed by a unanimous Senate vote.

The Warren Burger court Stevens joined was decidedly more liberal than the John Roberts court of today. Stevens was seen as a moderate prior to his confirmation. He voted like a moderate for years, but his decisions gradually swung to the left as the court drifted further and further from the liberal ideals of the Earl Warren court.

Like Stevens, Warren was nominated by a Republican president (Eisenhower) and turned out to be much more liberal than expected.

The Warren court’s heyday spanned the years of Stevens’ civilian legal career and brought forth such landmark decisions as Brown v. Board of Education (ending forced school segregation), Gideon v. Wainwright (enforcing the 6th Amendment right to counsel), Mapp v. Ohio (establishing the exclusionary rule for evidence collected in violation of the 4th Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures) and Miranda v. Arizona (requiring the ‘Miranda Warning’ upon arrest, which notifies those arrested of their constitutional rights).

Warren and Stevens are not rare outliers. In the 20th century, there have been quite a few Supreme Court Justices who surprised the Presidents who nominated them with their decisions from the bench.

Byron White, who served from 1962-1993 was nominated by a liberal Democratic president, John F. Kennedy, but often sided with his conservative peers on the high court.

David Souter, who retired last year, was nominated by a moderate Republican president, George H.W. Bush, but was perceived as a liberal on the court.

Now, President Obama will look to nominate a justice who maintains the court’s ‘balance.’ Currently, four justices are considered conservative: Roberts, Sam Alito, Anthony Scalia and Clarence Thomas; four are labeled as liberals: the retiring Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor. The ninth justice, Anthony Kennedy, is generally described as a conservative who sometimes sides with the liberals.

However, these labels are misleading. Since Sotomayor joined the court last year, only two of the 42 opinions handed down by the high court have seen justices split along the perceived ideological lines.

While certain justices clearly hold opposing views on certain issues, the Supreme Court does not operate in the same highly-charged political environment that dominates the rest of the nation’s capitol. When the court functions as it is supposed to, it serves as key constitutional check on the prevailing political winds of the day. Sometimes it justifiably stands to the left of the mainstream -- as it did during the Civil Rights era. Sometimes it leans to the right, as it does now.

Obama’s nominee needs only a simple majority vote by the Senate to join the court. The president’s choice should have no problem with the confirmation process as long as he or she possesses the proper qualifications and a track record that does not indicate overt partisan leanings.

Of course, there won’t be a unanimous confirmation vote. We haven’t seen one of those since Kennedy came to the court in 1988.

As the sound-bite circuit revs up for the confirmation process, be thankful that the Supreme Court is -- and hopefully always will be -- a non-partisan branch of government standing on its own.